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Huge Gleyber Torres swing set up hex-breaking Game 2 Aaron Judge home run for Yankees

Adam Weinrib
Adam Weinrib

Yanks Go Yard

Championship Series - Cleveland Guardians v New York Yankees - Game 2 / Sarah Stier/GettyImages

New York Yankees MVP candidate Aaron Judge has gotten a bad rap this postseason. Unfortunately, that's because it originated long before this postseason.

The burden of expectations placed upon Judge would be unfair for any other man, but he's ascended so often during the regular season that he's no longer expected to succumb to the pitfalls that crush mere mortals.

Sure, 13 homers in 14 postseason series is impressive ... but hitting .204 isn't. An historically high playoff strikeout rate isn't. Judge didn't win MVPs in 2022 and soon-to-be 2024 to play like Rob Deer under the brightest lights. He needed to transcend beyond the sac fly in this series, and he needed to do it soon.

Perhaps his bizarre popup to the unflappable Brayan Rocchio broke the Pre-2009 Alex Rodriguez Curse by emulating the Luis Castillo looper that changed Rodriguez's trajectory. His sacrifice fly against Cade Smith in the second -- okay, fine, we'll praise a sac fly -- represented an impressive job with two strikes.

But it was his seventh inning at-bat that, at least temporarily, altered the narrative.

Hopefully, the rest of the internet is on the same wavelength here, but before rightfully praising Judge and attaching the highlight you all came to see, we'd like to point out the ridiculously composed Gleyber Torres swing on a devastating Hunter Gaddis changeup that put a runner on for him in the first place. Gaddis is a menace. Nobody hits that change ... except Leadoff Gleyber, who redefined "stay back".

Yankees' Gleyber Torres set table for Aaron Judge's absurd home run in ALCS Game 2 vs. Guardians

After retiring Juan Soto, Gaddis got the matchup Guardians manager Stephen Vogt sought out in the second with a disrespectful (yet, sigh, also smart) intentional walk. Aaron Judge? Pshh. Easy out.

Except not this time. Not after Torres' display of discipline. Not against Cleveland's seventh pitcher of the day. Not on the heater he'd missed by a tick so many times earlier this month, including in his previous the at-bat. This time, he got under it with his full force.

If Jose Ramirez woke himself up in the ninth inning against Luke Weaver, the Yankees will (hopefully) happily counter with Judge, who finally found it in the biggest at-bat of Game 2.

Credit to Torres for sparking something. And credit to Judge for no longer looking like a (Rob) Deer in the headlights.

Adam Weinrib

Adam Weinrib

Adam Weinrib is a Content Director on the FanSided network, and has been the co-editor at Yanks Go Yard for 6 years. He also co-hosts The Baseball Insiders Podcast thrice weekly, alongside FanSided MLB insider Robert Murray, as well as the Yanks Go Yard Podcast. Previously, he was a Senior Editor at 12up.com, and has been covering MLB and NFL for 10 years. He was also a headline and features contributor at ClickHole and Onion Sports, as well as the Associate Producer of the ESPN 30 for 30 film "Believeland". An avowed fan of the New York sports teams -- specifically the Yankees -- as well as the North Carolina Tar Heels, you can find Adam complaining mid-game on Twitter, as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn if the game goes really poorly.